In recent years, portable electronic equipment (battery-drivable) such as a cellular-phone or a PDA (Personal Digital Assistants) terminal is widely used. This kind of electronic equipment prepares various mechanism of power saving to extend battery life. Furthermore, in order to reduce useless power consumption, analysis method of power consumption is variously developed. For example, one method is disclosed in Japanese Patent Disclosure (Kokai) PH11-202984 (U.S. Pat. No. 6,321,341).
In this reference, an apparatus for analyzing power consumption detects a power control signal (representing a control instruction related to a power consumption) issued from a computer as an inspection object to various devices, and measures a signal related to a power consumption of a predetermined device and a signal related to a power consumption of the computer. Relation between the power control signal and the power consumption is made clear based on detected signals.
By operating the power consumption analysis of this apparatus, a clue to determine control steps of the power control signal to maximally show the power saving effect can be obtained. Accordingly, working to last the battery long can be effectively realized.
On the other hand, semiconductor manufacture techniques continue to improve. In the electronic equipment such as the cellular-phone or the PDA terminal, a device including a processor is manufactured as one chip scale. Accordingly, detection of the power control signal and measurement of the power consumption of each device are useless in this kind of electronic equipment. Furthermore, signal lines to externally output signals related to the power control signal and the power consumption are not originally laid in the electronic equipment.
Furthermore, a request for high function of this electronic equipment goes on rising, and software loaded onto the electronic equipment has a tendency to increase and complicate. In such situation, the power control signal is indirectly activated because the software is hierarchically structured. Accordingly, even if the power control signal is detected, the relation between the power control signal and the software operation is not make clear.
As mentioned-above, in the apparatus for analyzing power consumption of the prior art, it is difficult to analyze the relation between the software operation and the power consumption quantity of the electronic equipment such as the cellular-phone and the PDA terminal.